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Tuesday, 3rd April, 2018

... you go insane and your PC becomes an NPC villain.
(4) Return to Grimdark. Basically the same as #2.
(5) End of Session Review. Get any XP that wasn't already assigned, plus answer some questions as a group for bonus XP.
During the delve, the PCs might short rest. In order to do so, they had to leave the dungeon and make a camp in the forest for 8 hours. There was another potential random encounter here, the chance of which was mitigated by how well the PCs set up their camp.
That same loop played out every session for 20 sessions with different players, characters, and goals each time. The Delve itself was about 12 different levels with a shadow dragon as the ultimate villain at the end. It was a very successful campaign and we had a lot of fun with it. The simple procedure I set up initially worked perfectly and produced good play experiences each time. And only about 10% of the characters died ultimately. I'll try harder in my next dungeon-delving campaign.
Valmarius and Lanliss both played in this and might have more to share.

Wednesday, 4th October, 2017

... numbers I can share on number of encounters or difficulty.
Host of the High Chieftain, a rewrite of Red Hand of Doom, ran 16 sessions and the characters went from 6th to 9th level. So that one seems to be off from your projections. Here it was also a player pool, albeit a smaller one than The Delve plus in the latter quarter of the campaign all comers were welcome, and everyone had 2 PCs (only one active at a time). Standard XP rewards, but your backup characters got half the XP your active character got. I also can't share any hard numbers on number of encounters or difficulty. I wonder if the extended number of sessions had something to do with a fair amount of mooks being in encounters which didn't particular increase XP or difficulty much but did increase the time to resolve a scene. It's also possible that the characters were close to 10th level, but I didn't give XP for the last session because we finished the campaign. That may bring it closer in line.
Summoning @Valmarius, @Lanliss, and @mexicangringo for comment if they are so inclined.
In any case, it's an interesting analysis and thanks for posting it. I've shared it with some other DMs.

Thursday, 7th September, 2017

...d have a certain amount of hours to delve and rest (short rests were 8 hours, long rests were one week). Regardless, at 11 pm in real time, I would sound the Thrice-Damned Horn which heralded the return of the dungeon to The Shade. Any PC trapped in the dungeon when it returned was rendered insane and became an NPC. So basically once the horn sounded, you need to wrap up what you're doing and get out.
Since the session was slated to end at midnight at the latest, this meant I had 1 hour of real time, more or less, to get them out of the dungeon, trek back to town, and resolve the end of session discussion. Which was plenty, even with a random encounter on the way back.
So the moral of the story is that it's perfectly doable if you plan for it and make sure that you have a cutoff in real time to make sure each session is self-contained. It may require some contrivances and player buy-in to make it happen, but with some work it can be made both cool and effective.
Valmarius and Lanliss both played in that game, so they might have some other insights.

Wednesday, 23rd August, 2017

It would solve my problem of reliably rolling low for their initiative so the PCs always have a chance to pile on first :)
Me too. Valmarius and Lanliss can attest to that.
It just wouldn't save me any time at the table to do it.

Tuesday, 30th May, 2017

...There was also a Short Rest/Camp Phase when the PCs rested. Rests were reconfigured to 8 hours for a short rest and a week for a long rest. Since the Delve only appeared for somewhere around 24 hours at a time, the players had to manage their travel time and number of rests they took per expedition. There was a hard-stop in real time around 4 hours into the session at which point the Thrice-Damned Horn would sound. If the PCs didn't beat feet out of the dungeon at that point, they risked being trapped when the Delve re-entered the Shade. (This meant your character was driven insane and became an NPC.)
To me, it was enjoyable because of the number of meaningful decisions that were built into the structure of the game. The players could figure stuff out and strategize to achieve the goals they themselves set week to week. As DM, it was easy to run because of the consistent structure and the set adventure location. This meant prep was a little heavier, but it was fun to put together.
@Lanliss and @Valmarius both played in this game, so they may have some other thoughts.

Oh, the Stone Thief--the dungeon in Eyes of the Stone Thief--is literally a living dungeon. It travels, it shifts levels around to try to kill the PCs, it builds new levels of itself out of what it consumes, and it actively hunts places and people the PCs love to destroy them.
Is Lanliss aware of this?

Tuesday, 16th May, 2017

I tried to have the ghost of a hag try to possess the dwarf paladin in my game last week ( Valmarius, @Lanliss). He succeeded handily in his save, then killed the ghost in one shot.
Later, he was charming enough to bed the (admittedly old and shrivel) leader of a wood elf clan.
...
He must be stopped.

Friday, 12th May, 2017

After a night of the PCs just steamrolling everything because I was rolling so terribly, I have a splint-wearing, maul-wielding ogre corner the dwarf paladin. It's toward the end of the session and I need to get my pound of flesh or else I will lose street cred.
I throw the bones. A crit - the only one all night - for 38 damage!
http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=84139&stc=1
Except the bard had made a vicious dick joke the turn before which gave the ogre disadvantage. So instead it was an 18 and thus a miss. It would have dropped the paladin, but instead he lived. Truly, the favor of the gods was upon him. (And the bard helped.)
CC: Lanliss, Valmarius

What a delightful character concept!
Warforged?
The 13th Age version of the warforged is the gearforged. Unlike a warforged, the gearforged are entirely metallic. All their knowledge is encoded on metallic ribbons that spool within them. The ribbons can be switched out, thereby fully or partially changing the memory, skills, and even the whole identity of the character.
Adapting something along the line of those concepts to a magical/organic creature should be doable, switching heads instead of ribbons.
Some of your character's sentience will need to be inherent to the body, with some way of sensing the location of any of its detached heads.
A memory just came to mind ... did you ever read the Dr. Seuss book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins? Using some of the ideas @Lanliss proposed above for losing a head, what if every time your PC lost one, another one just popped up in its place? Your initial rolls would be at disadvantage, as you tried to get your bearings in that "WTF?" round.
A specialized Bag of Holding or Handy Haversack could be used to store the heads that came off. (Bag of Beheading? Heady Haversack?)
With leveling up could come an increased level of control over which head returned to prominence.

Saturday, 29th April, 2017

...ic conflict (i.e. in a dungeon-crawl). It also eats up a ton of time, if not whole sessions.
I'm not sure what to do about this, but in the future, I'll probably frame town visits in the past tense. "The party spent a few days recuperating in town. What did you do during that time?"
Agreed. In my current campaign, I've implemented something of a "town stuff" mini-game that I think is working pretty well so far. We basically boiled down the general tasks you can do in town for a given day (or part of a day) to just a few - Carouse, Get Services (includes Recruit), Supply, Gather Information. Players choose which task their characters undertake individually and where to undertake it. (Sometimes they'll team up if they want to Help.) The locations offer trade-offs and usually have a cost, but you get a tangible benefit for your trouble if you succeed in your effort. It keeps things tight and we establish a few details here and there that add up into a fleshed out town pretty quickly. ( Lanliss has already seen some of that for his character based on his choices. He's got a bad relationship with the owner of the livery and the local thieves' guild.)

Monday, 24th April, 2017

Lanliss For "Gifts" (Invocations), I recommend checking out the Green Ronin Medieval Player's Guide; there is a holy man (IIRC) class in that book with a series of Charisms that you could adapt as "Gifts" if you like the feel of a medieval saint.
If you wish to add another layer of customization, like a warlock's Pact, I would recommend looking at "Virtues", which are a critical component of any faith. You could come up with your own list, use alignment, incorporate Ideals, or something along those lines.

Friday, 14th April, 2017

BTW guys, Tasha's Hideous Laughter is the spell to force creatures to lose concentration. Level 1, only restriction is Int 3+. Much lower spell level cast than dispel or counterspell.
That's a good one. The bard/wizard in my last campaign Lanliss used it very effectively. In one instance he saved the party from a run-in with the Fish Pope.

Sunday, 9th April, 2017

Lanliss
Except we know that this isn't the case. I'm sure you've been playing long enough and done interrogation scenes from both sides of the bars (not to mention captures) that you know this isn't the case in any campaign. I disagree that it's main focus is for escaping bonds as if you've gotten that far something has seriously gone wrong. I would allow it to be used to escape a grapple or a pit trap or really anything of that nature. Beyond that the (two lines I think?) are ambiguous enough that it's open to gm interpretation and I don't think it's intent is to be a true teleportation but more of a utility spell.

Tuesday, 4th April, 2017

Henry
I strongly agree, which is one of many reasons I hated the Theurge. Wizards already have huge spell lists that are evidently set to get bigger, they don't need to invade other class' turf as well.
Lanliss
While I do like the warlock class conceptually and mechanically, I feel it has strayed pretty far from the theme of classical witches and the like. I'd definitely say that it's easier to create that archetypal character through the wizard/druid/alchemist currently.

Saturday, 1st April, 2017

Nothing less than a fully nonmagical cleric-analogue (who can use his powers at-will) will satisfy the warlord crowd.I assume that you don't regard yourself as part of "the warlord crowd". Yet you are the only one who has posited that the warlord must be able to use Raise Dead, Silence, etc - ie the full gamut of cleric effects.
The post by Tony Vargas to which you replied was doubting your claim in respect of this, yet now you attribute your claim to him as part of your reason for being frustrated.
And as far as the "at will" bit is concerned, Tony Vargas, Lanliss and I have been discussing various options for rationing. mellored favours "at wil", but has not given any indication that that is the only way s/he (sorry, not sure what your pronoun is, mellored) will be satsified.
So in the end, I'm not even really sure who you think you're conversing with.

Thursday, 30th March, 2017

Lanliss - In focusing on the BM model, I hadn't looked at the monk as a possibility. It's an interesting idea - I think something "ki-ish" (perhaps a new label is needed, but that seems a small thing) might work. Like you suggest, it already allows more fine-grained balance (because it can be 1 to X points for an effect; the same sort of economy is used for legendary actions).
I'm not sure if it's your intention, but your post tends to confirm my feeling that the challenges are technical - how to do it; not whether it can be done.

Monday, 27th March, 2017

...n sure, for worldbuilding purposes you could just totally ignore the game mechanics, but that's a flaw in the mechanics in my opinion.No, it just implies that there exist "classes" outside the ones presented for adventurers in the PHB. Which has to the best of my knowledge always been an assumption in D&D. Rogues and bards are simply the sorts of adventurers whose role requires them to develop their mundane skills to that level at the expense of some magical or martial ability. That's something special, and I wouldn't want to take that away from them by giving every character a free expertise any more than I'd want to take the wonder of magic away from the wizard by giving every character a free spell. Now, that doesn't mean a player who wants their wizard to be an expert on Arcana should be totally shut out, of course. If NPCs can do it, PCs should be able to do it in principle. Maybe as a feat or a subclass, or in a pinch, they can just grab a level of rogue.
And I do agree with Lanliss that the ranger ought to join the bard and the rogue as an expert class. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just throw a line in Natural Explorer giving it to them with Survival. Maybe another feature further down giving them another expertise of their choice, possibly limited to the list of ranger class skills. It's not going to break anything, it's not likely to step on the rogue or bard's toes (because they both get more and usually put them in different skills), and the ranger has no excuse not to rule over all in straight-up Survival checks.

Wednesday, 22nd March, 2017

Over on the D&DB forums, someone suggested simply changing any mention of "Feet" to meters. So a characters speed is 30 "Meters", they can jump a number of "Meters" equal to their strength score, and spells have a range of 60 "meters". Everything gets a lot bigger, but it is a simple enough conversion to make. Either that or make every square a meter, which actually goes in the opposite direction, but accomplishes pretty much the same goal of putting everything on a single measurement. The point is, as the poster on the other forums put it, that the unit is irrelevant. It could just as easily be "Units", "Cubits", or "Kumquats", so long as it is all kept constant.
@Lanliss
Well, that's a worse idea than I thought. I would not like if they do anything like this.
If that's the point I can't even understand why people care about this.
I mean, if you don't care about the precise representation of units in terms of imaginary distance, weight or volume, why care about the then? They're just words after all. Can't you just do this on the fly? If the book says 2 pounds you pretend it said 2 Kilograms. That's fine if it suits your style. But why mess with the words in the book? Leave than be for those who want to deal with the extra hassle...

Friday, 17th March, 2017

I was just pointing out effects that bards have that are not specifically magical. Bardic Inspiration obviously can't heal. :D But, "enhancement to what HD are already doing" is a healing effect. We're adding hp to the character without actually having to cast any magic.
I wouldn't mind, personally for our putative warlord to tie his healing to HD in the party. This would not bother me in the least.
Me neither. I'm not criticizing what you said; it just surprised me. Inspiration and Song of Rest strike me as fine features for a warlord class. Although at that point it's starting to look like a "nonmagical variant bard" akin to the elusive nonmagical ranger, and I'm sure some of the people clamoring for warlords would take objection to them being passed off as a mere variant.
EDIT: Sorry, Lanliss, responded to Hussar before reading your post. It seems we're thinking along the same lines.

Tuesday, 30th April, 2019

I don't like the whole Bronze/Brass/Copper relationship. I have seen some talk of Iron and Adamantine dragons, so I want to use them instead. Since I am currently working on my world's Dragonborn, I actually need to know what breath weapon and resistance they would gain. Anyone able to help with this?
In 3.5, the Iron Dragon had a cone of "superheated sparks" dealing 1/2 fire and 1/2 electricity as well as a cone of sleep gas (I have no idea why).
For reference, there was a whole branch of "Ferrous" evil metallic dragons
Iron
Chromium (line of solid ice, not quite sure how the physics of that works)
Cobalt (line of "pulsating magnetic energy" aka: force)
Nickel (cone of corossive gas)
Tungsten (cone of blasting sand aka: fire damage)

Monday, 26th February, 2018

33. Did your players kill your BBEG in two rounds, giving him no time to use all his cool "totally balanced" abilities? Don't worry, It was just a dream sequence! It never really happened, and in fact they were imprisoned while they were sleeping.
66. Corollary to this. Imprison you PC's while they were sleeping. Repeatedly.
67. Create house rules to "fix" the game without doing the basic math required to ensure that the "fix" actually fixes anything.
68. When adjudicating actions that are not specifically covered by the rules, always make sure that you set the difficulty so high that failure is virtually guaranteed. Then complain loudly that your players "never think outside the box".

Sunday, 25th February, 2018

A gem from my past bad ideas.
35. Reverse inspiration. Players aren't role playing the way you want them to? That player has a reverse inspiration, giving a random monster of your choosing Advantage against them.
I am using a version of this right now!

Sunday, 24th September, 2017

I hope they also do some work with Roll20.
This was asked and answered on twitter:
https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/910601083285852163
They are planning on working with Roll20. But, of course, it's not clear (to me) if they are in active discussions the same way.
AD

Friday, 1st September, 2017

A question for those of you who advocate the notion that rests just "happen" if PCs are not engaging in sufficiently strenuous activity for a sufficient period of time:
Can a PC choose to NOT Long Rest even though they are not engaging in strenuous activity for 8 hours?
If Long Rests just "happen", and they are limited to one per 24 hours, then you'd think the party wizard could get screwed by being forced into a Long Rest when he hasn't cast any spells yet. And he then has to wait 24 hours before he can Long Rest again...
This issue came up in Critical Role. The barbarian had a Sword that gained power as he struck enemies with it, but the power would go away on a short or long rest. In an attempt to avoid resting, he spent everyone else's rest time keeping watch and aggressively pacing, to keep his heart rate up.
I wouldn't allow this for a simple reason: the player is trying to rules-lawyer a limitation on the item or class ability. To me, this is no different than the old "bag of rats...

Thursday, 31st August, 2017

This issue came up in Critical Role. The barbarian had a Sword that gained power as he struck enemies with it, but the power would go away on a short or long rest. In an attempt to avoid resting, he spent everyone else's rest time keeping watch and aggressively pacing, to keep his heart rate up.
This is the kind of trade off i like on a magic item. Power that comes at a cost.

Tuesday, 29th August, 2017

I plan to shamelessly take advantage of this community's wisdom and knowledge, so I have some basic questions with complicated answers. I will be running a game for new players, and after some time teaching them the rules I plan to kick it off in my own world as a sandbox game.
What are the pros and cons of a sandbox game?
How can I maximize the pros?
How can I minimize the cons?
Pros - you can go in any direction! With that in mind, motives and means are more important to track than set pieces.

I plan to shamelessly take advantage of this community's wisdom and knowledge, so I have some basic questions with complicated answers. I will be running a game for new players, and after some time teaching them the rules I plan to kick it off in my own world as a sandbox game.
What are the pros and cons of a sandbox game?
How can I maximize the pros?
How can I minimize the cons?
Resting is a con. With more time spent travelling or on downtime between encounters you need rests to scale appropriately. I'm about to start using
Short Rest
A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 6 hours long. Along with the standard benefits of a short rest, taking a short rest allows characters to reduce exhaustion, or examine or attune an item, or change prepared spells or perform a downtime activity.
Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 2 days long. Along with the standard benefits of a long rest, each day of a long rest allows characters to reduce exhaustion...

Monday, 28th August, 2017

Not sure when I am actually starting to teach them, as some of them are having technical difficulties right now. Next year is a real possibility, though I hope it is more like late september/early october.
They are fresh, so a sandbox might not be the best idea, but I have wanted to try it out. I have been working on a world for something like a year or two now, and would enjoy being able to run some players in it. I am hoping that getting them fresh will lead to them not being set on a closed mind set. If I can start them early on the idea of thinking for themselves, I might be able to avoid some of the major complaints I have seen in regards to sandboxes.
That said, this is simply preemptive thought. I am not set on forcing them into a sandbox if they aren't interested.
I am running my own world sandbox style for a fresh faced group. Only one has ever played D&D before. So far, so good. Sure, we are only a week or so in as far as game time, but the players are having fun, and I am havi...

Saturday, 26th August, 2017

If you are to the point where you are calling your debate partners position "propaganda", I think you are past the point of reasonable discussion.
The rule isn't about calling your debate partners position propaganda. Though there is probably a different rule for that....
The new rule is that: "You MAY NOT use the terms "agenda", "ideology", "politics", or "propaganda" in relation to the inclusion of people slightly different to you in gaming products".
For example, if a gay character is included you cannot discuss that you think it was due to an "agenda", "ideology", "politics" or "propaganda".

Really? I read the rule as simply saying not to discard any such posts as "ideology" or "propaganda". Nothing says you can't have a reasonable discussion about different opinions.
Well actually, IF that reasonable discussion would include "the terms "agenda", "ideology", "politics", or "propaganda" in relation to the inclusion of people slightly different to you in gaming products" then we cannot have that discussion here.

Really? I read the rule as simply saying not to discard any such posts as "ideology" or "propaganda". Nothing says you can't have a reasonable discussion about different opinions.
You may want to read the directive again: "You MAY NOT USE the terms "agenda", "ideology", or "propaganda" or "politics" in relation to the inclusion of people slightly different to you in gaming products." It's not that posts cannot be dismissive of other posts; posts cannot impute those ideas on the gaming products or the creators thereof.

Not sure when I am actually starting to teach them, as some of them are having technical difficulties right now. Next year is a real possibility, though I hope it is more like late september/early october.
They are fresh, so a sandbox might not be the best idea, but I have wanted to try it out. I have been working on a world for something like a year or two now, and would enjoy being able to run some players in it. I am hoping that getting them fresh will lead to them not being set on a closed mind set. If I can start them early on the idea of thinking for themselves, I might be able to avoid some of the major complaints I have seen in regards to sandboxes.
That said, this is simply preemptive thought. I am not set on forcing them into a sandbox if they aren't interested.
Maybe, but it may make it worse as they won't have any experience to know what kinds of things are really dangerous and what aren't unless you plan to spend a very lot of in game time trying to explain those differences.

I plan to shamelessly take advantage of this community's wisdom and knowledge Being shameless will help you DM more than any wisdom and knowledge we can impart. ;)
so I have some basic questions with complicated answers. I will be running a game for new players, and after some time teaching them the rules So sometime next year, then? ;P
I plan to kick it off in my own world as a sandbox game. Why is it you want to run a sandbox in the first place? Curious to try it out? Your players seem to want it? You've heard bad things about 'railroads?'

Friday, 25th August, 2017

I plan to shamelessly take advantage of this community's wisdom and knowledge, so I have some basic questions with complicated answers. I will be running a game for new players, and after some time teaching them the rules I plan to kick it off in my own world as a sandbox game.
What are the pros and cons of a sandbox game?
How can I maximize the pros?
How can I minimize the cons?
I tend to dislike sandboxy type games. So I can speak more to the cons from my perspective.
1. It's much harder to make informed decisions.
2. Overload of choices and most not particularly interesting and the ones interesting to a specific character/player are rarely interesting to everyone.
3. There are rarely any decent simulation type mechanics in the game for what kinds of consequences my actions will have which feeds back into the informed decisions and overload of choices problem.
So my advice would be. Start the sandbox off with a bang. Don't start it out as an open world where the players can do an...

Monday, 29th May, 2017

I had an idea a couple days ago, and decided to post it here now that I have my thoughts straight. Has anyone seen a Living Dungeon? It is sentient, it is intelligent, and it can see and hear everything the heroes are doing as they progress through it. By the end, it knows every power they have used, and has probably planned accordingly.
Nah, that's just your run-of-the-mill sentient dungeon! It's only meta-gamey (and trolly) if the dungeon always waits til hour 7 of the long rest to send monsters against them
Extra points if a thunderous voice booms "Ha ha, suck it noobs!"

Friday, 26th May, 2017

Just put more difficult terrain in his path, that'll slow him down plenty. Beyond that, I'm not sure he can be stopped.
If he's down for bedding a wood elf crone clearly he has no problem with difficult terrain :)

Well, there are all the times you have said that a DM not enforcing the 6-8 encounters at least 50% of the time is "Failing as a DM". Sounds a lot like shutting down other playstyles to me.
If I said that I apologise. A DM is only failing as a DM if they dont understand that the longer adventuring day is the mechanical sweet spot that the games classes and encounter difficulty balance around, and acknowledge the problems that surface by straying away from it.
And to be fair to those DMs, 5E doesnt expresly tell the new DM. Its kind of obliquely referred to in several places, and hidden away in the background structure of the game, and requires a solid understanding of the mechanics of the game, and an overview of all the classes and rules to clearly see.
(Also I personally loathe games where the players routinely use the 5MWD. It ruins my immersion and the game loses any narrative drive and becomes rocket tag. Although I conceed that some DMs may actually prefer to run their games this way,...

Thursday, 25th May, 2017

Another one to look at, I have heard that Adventures in Middle Earth has a non-magical Bard. I have seriously considered picking the book up just for the player options I have heard are in it.
Ooo good point. I have had the exact same thought.

Wednesday, 24th May, 2017

I guess I meta game a lot then. I write my adventures and alter published adventures with my players in mind.
By "Meta-game" I mean a few key things that are usually considered metagaming. Planning ahead based on the players powers, attacking specific characters first, without any obvious sign of who they are (How do you tell the difference between the Paladin and Cleric?The dungeon has seen the difference. It knows who heals better, and it will target them.), and possibly putting an obstacle or two in their path that is damn near impossible for their skill set.
For example, a party with no thief, or otherwise designated-trap-person. Lay a whole floor full of deadly traps, and watch the party throw themselves against it. They pull out to rest? Move the traps up to the floor above that, but leave it looking exactly the same. Move triggers to traps, meaning that different tiles are safe now, while previously safe ones will trigger it. Remove the traps entirely, and watch them waste thei...